Earlier today, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously for a project that has been in the works for quite some time – a ban on recreational sales of nitrous oxide, aka “whippets” or “whippits” or whatever. It’s long been illegal, under state law, for people to use nitrous to get high, but there’s been no such regulation on selling the gas, which has medical and culinary uses.

The new county ordinance bans all sales of nitrous oxide in the county’s unincorporated areas, unless it’s to a licensed pharmacist or medical professional. It will apply to Internet retailers as well. Food products containing the gas – notably, compress whipped cream – will still be allowed.

Older people in the county, present company included, may still be a little bit inclined to think of the drug as a silly one-time high that kids did at festivals, or off the whipped cream canister in the refrigerator. But those days are long past, and there’s a whole panoply of new equipment for sale that makes it easy to develop a very dangerous addiction to the substance, which was dangerous enough to begin with. There are kids out there who are hitting their rigs constantly, often enough with tragic results to themselves and others.

As she often does when the subject comes up, Board Chair Michelle Bushnell spoke movingly of the damage that abuse of this particular substance does to young people in the community.

“I had a staff member at one of my stores,” she said. “He, at 22 years old, had passed away with a nitrous cracker in his hand. The amount of information that I’ve received, like my other colleagues, from family members and parents and kids — kids that had been on nitrous — that said, ‘Please do something, this is a terrible drug …’”

The new law is bolstered by a separate amendment to the county’s ordinance regulating tobacco sales, which the board also passed today after a bit of discussion. Smoke shops are the biggest retailers of nitrous oxide in the county, according to research undertaken by staff of the Department of Health and Human Services, so this amendment would yank the license of any tobacco retailer in the county’s jurisdiction found to be engaging in sales of the drug.

Discussion about the tobacco enforcement part of the nitrous ban got derailed for a moment, when Supervisor Rex Bohn asked for the board’s backing on a different amendment to county tobacco law. The Petrolia Store is under new ownership, Bohn said, and they’re looking to get their tobacco license back. Problem: The number of tobacco licensees in the county’s unincorporated area is capped by county ordinance, and we’re currently at the cap. But this hardly seems fair to the residents of Petrolia, who would have to drive to Honeydew or Ferndale for their smokes instead of keeping their money in town. While they were on the subject of tobacco, might the board consider asking staff to look at changes to the tobacco ordinance that would accommodate the people of that town, so that a solution might come back to the board for a vote at a later date?

Though several supervisors expressed some discomfort with this, eventually Supervisor Mike Wilson proposed that Bohn and Supervisor Steve Madrone form a sort of ad hoc subcommittee to study the issue with staff. Thus placated, the board voted unanimously in favor of the original amendment to the tobacco ordinance, with the harsh penalties against retailers that are found to be selling nitrous.

Today’s vote makes Humboldt the second county in the state to ban recreational nitrous oxide sales. Orange County passed its own ordinance a couple of months ago. The city of Arcata will be considering its own ordinance at the council meeting tomorrow night.

###

As of this writing, the board still has not been able to get to the other big-ticket item on its agenda — a discussion of the dismal financial outlook that county government is facing. We’ll have more on that later.